An ever-increasing amount of information is presented to users through their computing devices, often inappropriately distracting the user from other tasks that require the user's concentration. Studies have indicated that users are less productive when they are distracted by incoming email messages, which are often only indirectly relevant at best. In addition to emails, users of computing devices are often bombarded with text messages, social media messages, notifications of upcoming or scheduled events, and other like proactively presented information.
Users, however, are becoming increasingly reliant on computing devices to manage their day-to-day lives and interact with their friends and colleagues. Information such as road conditions, travel times, weather forecasts, meeting reminders, to-do lists and the like enable users to set and maintain a schedule and organize the activities that they perform throughout the day. Similarly, emails, textual messages, pictures, video conferences, and other like communications from friends and colleagues provide information that users utilize for both productivity and leisure pursuits.
Consequently, users have been trained to actively seek out the information they desire, while simultaneously filtering out the notifications that are not impactful. Email messages are obtained through a dedicated email application program, text messages are obtained through a dedicated messaging application program, weather is obtained through a dedicated weather application program, traffic information is obtained through a dedicated traffic application program, and so on. In actively seeking out information they desire, users have been trained to utilize these applications individually, and then assimilate the information obtained therefrom in the users' own mind. Similarly, in filtering out notifications that are not impactful, users have been trained to keep track of such notifications, again, in the users' own mind, until such time when the information referenced by the notification does become impactful. Consequently, a notification that an email message is received is presented when that email message is received and the responsibility of remembering to respond to such an email message at a later time is left for the user. Unsurprisingly, users struggle with such inherent inefficiencies. A user running late to a meeting, for example, may forget to check the traffic conditions because the application program through which the user learned of the meeting, and, by proxy, the user's tardiness, is different from the application program through which the user can obtain traffic conditions. Similarly, a user receiving an email at an inopportune time, such as in the middle of a meeting, often forgets to respond to such an email at a later, more opportune time, such as after the meeting has ended, because the notification of the receipt of such an email is presented when the email is received irrespective of whether such a time is an opportune time for the user to consume and respond to such an email message.